design

Pity the Welsh, and not just for their poor rugby team. At this year’s Venice Biennale their artists were at a site so removed you probably only found it if you got on the wrong boat heading out of town.
In a city of bewildering lanes, many exhibitions were as elusive. Even those from Iran and Afghanistan -- their banners draped...

We live in a cynical world, as Jerry Maguire said. And there are reasons to be cynical: corruption and graft, deja-vu politics, corporate fraud and payouts, famine and futility …
Yet it is also too easy to by-pass healthy scepticism and head straight for the negativism of a suspicious, cynical view of Man and the world.
Cynicism...

As someone with an amateur’s enthusiasm for architecture and design, I was disappointed to miss the recent talk by the English essayist Alain de Botton, author of the popular book The Architecture of Happiness.
I call him an essayist because that is what he is: as someone who travels often and writes about it I had previously...

Evening in Barcelona in a small cafe near the old Cathedral. I have spent the afternoon underground and now, over rich red wine and tapas, my thoughts have turned to the humble brick. Today I have touched these ancient building blocks. My back is resting against a wall which is perhaps a century old and so, seated by myself in an unfamiliar...

High in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, The Getty Centre offers
a commanding view.
“Yeah, on a clear day you can see smog forever,” says a droll
Angelino as he stares into the blue-grey gauze which lies lightly
over his city on this typically perfect, dry day.
That said the Getty, as it is commonly known and which...